Right at this moment, ability costs are all over the place, ever wondered why something like tactical sense is 30 AP, heavy hitter is 40 but something like Guard or Indomitable are 10 AP a pop ?

Its pretty much the result of different mods clashing together but there is a easy way to fix it.



I say its time to normalize all abilities in to multiple tiers

1) Starting and prerequsite perks
These all should cost 10 AP, this contains all perks that are needed to either start your class with (Or to be even able to use a certain item).

Also all bottom tier or really weak perks will be really cheap.

2) Defense perks
If you have alot of experience with LWOTC, you know already that defense has contraproductive effects, you might think that "Oh this high super defense soldier will waste Advents attacks !" but in reality no, Advent will just simply shoot at anyone else but the high defense soldier.

This is why players consider perks like tactical sense as actually a bad pick because it doesnt protect your soldier at all and just shifts targetting at the rest of your team or WORSE it instead encourages Advent to just lob explosives and transforms an attack that can miss to a 100% guaranteed damage.

How do you tank in XCOM 2 ? Simple, have perks that DECREASE your defence so Advent will fire at you, this is how Templars work in LWOTC. Or present a juicy target that can just deflect attacks (stormriders/hoplites) with dodge turning attacks to a miss.

So TLDR defense perks arent powerful in Long War and should cost around 20 AP a pop

3) Immunity perks
Things like bastion, Sixth sense, Mechanical Chasis (immunity to fire) should cost 50 AP a pop so players think twice of buying alot of them and taking one of these will be a large decision as you either have to save up AP by skipping abilities on previous tiers or just take 1 ability on promotion.

There should be a point to use items, hazmat vests, mind shields and pressing one button on promotion and invalidating their existence is too cheap for the rest of the game, with items you need precious corpses, supplies AND item slots.

4) Damage boosting perks
All damage boosting perks should cost 30 - 35 AP atleast because these perks invalidate the point of Dark Events that are suppose to keep up Advents strenght and if you can just stack damage perks you just undoing all the work of things like Alien Conditioning.

5) Concealment perks
Concealment is more powerful in LW2 than in WOTC and some perks become impossibly strong with them, things like +50% aim and crit with saturation fire when concealed ? Wtf is this, let alone if you can just reconceal your machinegunner who can delete massive number of enemies with 1 attack over and over !

They should cost 35 AP if applicable on other team mates, 30 AP for self concealment

6) Gremlin abilities
Given even in base game and with gremlin classes you are expected to have alot of them at once (Given there is a limit to how many gremlin abilities you can cast in one turn and Gremlins can be underwhelming and LWOTC corpse scarcity keeps them in check, double layer)

They should cost 15 abilities a pop, attack gremlin abilities should cost 25 AP (Things like capacitor discharge).

7) Psi abilities
Should cost around 20 AP, splash attacks 30 AP.

8) Action economy perks
Things like overdrive, inspire etc... should cost around 25 AP given they are powerful but they kinda depend on your other team mates if they can even utilize it

This category also contains free items or abilities that make abilities cost only 1 AP or none at all (things like Salvo !)

9) Average perks
Should cost around 20-25 AP

10) Pistol perks
These should cost 20 a pop.

11) STRONG perks
These are category-less, anything that is usually on MSGT should be 40 AP alteast

Of course these numbers are up to debate and you can disagree and provide some counterpoints, that is the point of discussions after all. Hell i am sure i will make some deviations but main objective will be to standardize as many of them as possible. With some basics set up we can further move to phase 2 of advanced rebalancing and focus on how many ability points you actually get given we will have some point of reference.

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And you know the best part ? I aint gona just be the idea guy but i will start rewriting inis with my made up rules of RPGO classes i play with and once i am done i will post the rewritten (i guess via google documents or something like that)

I will be balancing the costs from the view who plays on Legendary w prime reaction Chosen, given thats how you should play RPGO to ever have even remotely balanced experience else XCOM just rolls advent on all other difficulties.